Analysis of Politics, Philosophy and Economics from a Marxist Perspective

Wednesday, 12 October 2016

Yes, Protest The Russian Embassy

Yesterday,
Boris Johnson said that people should be protesting outside the
Russian Embassy, in London, against the bombing of civilians, in
Aleppo, by Russian and Syrian warplanes. He's right. Socialists
should be protesting the brutal actions of Putin and Assad, but we
can make no common cause with people like Johnson, in undertaking
such protests. Johnson represents a government, which along with its
NATO allies, has been responsible for widespread, murderous attacks
on civilians across the globe, including the use of cruise missiles,
and other such weapons of mass destruction, and the use of depleted
uranium munitions, whose terrible effects will continue to affect
people for generations to come, just as did the use of Agent
Orange, by the US, in Vietnam.

Socialists
should protest the brutal actions of Putin and Assad's forces.
Johnson's criticism of people like the Stop The War Coalition,
who fail to protest, or even criticise, the actions of any of those
reactionary forces, ranged against the reactionary forces of western
imperialism, effectively place themselves in the camp of one set of
reactionary forces as opposed to the other. They make themselves, at
the least, passive dupes of reactionaries like Putin or Assad, or
Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian Mullahs and so on. They are a mirror
image of those like the AWL, who make themselves willing dupes of
imperialism, in such conflicts. Both, are the result of the same
Third Campist, petit-bourgeois, moralistic approach to
politics, which starts from a moral imperative of some worthy aim –
opposition to imperialism in one case, opposition to anti-democratic,
authoritarianism in the other – rather than the Marxist imperative
to defend and advance the cause of the global working-class, and to
build its unity, self-activity and self government.

Both groups,
thereby place the fate of the working-class in the hands of some
alien class force, having lost faith in the working-class itself to
be the vehicle of progressive change, or at least faith in its
ability to provide solutions to immediate problems. Trotsky warned
against such an approach long ago. In his writings on the Balkan
Wars, for example, he wrote that even where imperialist forces
intervene in such situations to overturn some existing set of
reactionary conditions – in that case the oppression of peoples
within the Ottoman Empire – they do so for their own reasons, and
so even the end result of their actions can never be the end result
that we as socialists seek. Moreover, we never advocate that the
working-class should passively rely on, or fail to oppose the
intervention of our class enemies in such situations, rather than
advocating the building of working-class unity, and self-activity.
Eighty years after the Battle of Cable Street, we should
remember that lesson.

“Democracy
has no right, political or moral, to entrust the organisation of the
Balkan peoples to forces that are outside its control – for it is
not known when and where these forces will stop, and democracy,
having once granted them the mandate of its political confidence,
will be unable to check them.” (Trotsky – War Correspondence, The
Balkan Wars 1912-13, p 148-52)

“...only
a struggle against the usurpation of history's tasks by the present
masters of the situation will educate the Balkan peoples to play the
role of superseding not only Turkish despotism but also those who,
for their own reactionary purposes, are, by their own barbarous
methods, now destroying that despotism...

Our
agitation, on the contrary, against the way that history's problems
are at present being solved, goes hand in hand with the work of the
Balkan Social Democrats. And when we denounce the bloody deeds of
the Balkan 'liberation' from above we carry forward the struggle not
only against liberal deception of the Russian masses but also against
enslavement of the Balkan masses.” (ibid, p 293-4)

“It is
necessary to vindicate the possibility for these peoples themselves
to settle their own affairs, not only as they wish and see fit but
also by their own strength, in the land where they are established.
This means that European democracy has to combat every attempt
to subject the fate of the Balkans to the ambitions of the Great
Powers.” (ibid, p 148)

Bourgeois politicians, like Johnson, and the liberal interventionists
point to Syria as an example of what happens when western imperialism
fails to intervene in such situations, as an antidote to the
criticism of their disastrous adventures in Iraq, Libya and
elsewhere. But, in doing so they lie. A large part of the problems
currently existing in the Middle East stem from the original
intervention of western colonialism in the region, and the carving up
of the region into countries that met the requirements of those
colonial powers, rather than being based on any consideration of
tribal, ethnic or religious divisions. It was as Trotsky describes
in relation to the Balkans a solution imposed from above.

The more immediate problem emanating from the growth of ISIS, and
other Islamist organisations, is itself a consequence of the
fostering of such organisations by the US, for its own global
strategic interests. It was the US that encouraged the growth of Bin
Laden and the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan to oppose the Russian backed
regime in Kabul, during the 1980's. It was the US, via the CIA that
utilised Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to turn the facscistic, criminal
thugs of the KLA, into a more effective terrorist organisation in
Serbia, to stir up ethnic tensions in Kosovo, to undermine the
Serbian regime, and thereby weaken Russian influence in the region.
It is US, UK, and French armaments shipped to the regime in Saudi
Arabia, and other Gulf Monarchies that has enabled them to oppress
their own populations, and to arm and finance the Wahhabist militants
that have spread across the globe, as the breeding ground of Islamist
terror.

It was the intervention of the US and UK in Iraq that opened the door
to sectarian division of the country, and enabled the Islamists to
walk into the resulting vacuum. It was the lying words of the UK, US
and EU in calling for a no-fly zone in Libya, which turned into them
undertaking tens of thousands of bombing runs, and cruise missile
attacks to overthrow Gaddafi, which opened the door to the
establishment of the Islamist reign of terror there. Moreover, the
talk of war crimes by Russia and Assad, are wholly hypocritical
coming from politicians and regimes that undertook the three month
long intensive bombardment, and massacre of the people of Sirte!

But, the claim that the US, and UK have not been intervening in Syria
is itself a lie, even prior to their more recent bombing of ISIS.
The fact is that it is only the prospect of such intervention, based
on the past intervention in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, that has led
to small groups of people undertaking adventures to overthrow regimes
without the necessary social forces to succeed. They do so in the
expectation that imperialism will come to their aid, and do the work
for them that their own resources cannot achieve. And, in Syria, it
was the West's allies in the gulf monarchies that directly financed,
trained and armed the Islamist terror groups acting in Syria. NATO
member Turkey allowed a free flow of Islamist terrorists, not just
from Islamic states, but also from the US and Europe into Syria to
undertake such activity. They were given tacit sanction, and often
safe harbour, by the Islamist regime in Turkey itself, just as in the
1980's, the US utilised the Islamist regime in Pakistan to channel
terrorists and arms into Afghanistan to fight the Russians.

The US and its allies have utilised Islamist terror groups to further
their own global strategic interests, and they bear the
responsibility for the vile atrocities that those terrorist
organisations have inflicted. But, as Trotsky pointed out in his
writings on the Balkan Wars, the fact that such conflicts see
terrible atrocities on one side, does not mean that socialists can
ignore or fail to oppose the atrocities committed on the other, even
where they are committed by forces that claim to be acting to promote
“liberation”. In the Balkans, it was the “liberal
interventionist” forces of Russia, that claimed to be
liberating the people's of the area from the Oriental despotism of
the Ottomans. It was those liberating forces that claimed the moral
high ground for themselves, and their imperialist apologists who
censored the criticism of the atrocities committed by the
“liberating” forces.

Trotsky wrote about the atrocities committed by such “liberal
intervention”.

“An individual, a group, a party, or a class that ‘objectively’
picks its nose while it watches men drunk with blood massacring
defenceless people is condemned by history to rot and become
worm-eaten while it is still alive.

“On the
other hand, a party or the class that rises up against every
abominable action wherever it has occurred, as vigorously and
unhesitatingly as a living organism reacts to protect its eyes when
they are threatened with external injury – such a party or class is
sound of heart. Protest against the outrages in the Balkans cleanses
the social atmosphere in our own country, heightens the level of
moral awareness among our own people. The working masses of the
population in every country are both a potential instrument of bloody
outrages and a potential victim of such deeds. Therefore an
uncompromising protest against atrocities serves not only the purpose
of moral self-defence on the personal and party level but also the
purpose of politically safeguarding the people against adventurism
concealed under the flag of ‘liberation’.” (ibid, p 293)

“Liberation”, for the people of Syria, and for the rest of
that region cannot be handed to them from above, by the actions of
imperialistic “liberal interventionist forces”. It can
only be won by the masses of that region themselves, with the active
support of the global working-class. If we had, at least, a
functioning socialist internation across Europe, it would be a
powerful force to throw its weight behind the masses of Syria, Iraq,
Jordan, Egypt, Libya, and so on, not only to fight for a democratic
solution to their problems, but also for a sustainable solution based
upon the formation of a Middle East Federation of states, in the same
way that Trotsky argued for the Balkans. It would be able to throw
its weight behind the working-class of Russia, suffering under the
heel of Putin's authoritarian regime.

Where the solution does not lie, is in demands for western
imperialism to impose solutions from above, such as the proposal for
a “no-fly zone”. Who exactly would impose and police this
no-fly zone? In reality, it is simply a demand for Putin and Assad
to give up their current dominant position, and to hand it over to
the US and NATO. That will never happen, and any attempt to impose
such a no-fly zone, whilst Russina planes continue to fly, in the
area, is an open invitation for the start of World War III!.

“But the majority of politicians, while quite properly refusing
the Great Powers the right to make any claims on the Balkans, desire
at the same time that Russia should help, arms in hand, the Balkan
peoples to reorganise the Balkans as these leading political
personalities would like the Balkans to be. This hope, or this
demand, may become the source of great mistakes and great
misfortunes. I say nothing about the fact that this approach to the
question transforms the Balkan War into a conscious provocation to a
measuring of strength on the all-European scale, which can mean
nothing short of a European War. And, however dear to us the fate of
the young Balkan peoples, however warmly we wish for them the best
possible development of cultured existence on their own soil, there
is one thing we must tell them plainly and honestly, as we must tell
ourselves: We do not want, and we are unable to put our own cultural
development at risk. Bismark once said that the whole Balkan
Peninsula was not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.
We too can say today: If the leading parties of the Balkans, after
all their sad experience of European intervention, can see no other
way of settling the fate of the Balkans but a fresh European
intervention, the results of which no one can foreordain, then their
political plans are indeed not worth the bones of a single
infantryman from Kursk. That may sound harsh, but it is the only way
that this tragic question can be seen by any honest democratic
politician who thinks not only of today but also of tomorrow.”
(ibid pp 153-4)

Lenin made a similar point,

“The several demands of democracy, including self-determination, are not an absolute, but only a small part of the general-democratic (now: general-socialist) world movement. In individual concrete cases, the part may contradict the whole; if so, it must be rejected...

Let us assume that between two great monarchies there is a little monarchy whose kinglet is “bound” by blood and other ties to the monarchs of both neighbouring countries. Let us further assume that the declaration of a republic in the little country and the expulsion of its monarch would in practice lead to a war between the two neighbouring big countries for the restoration of that or another monarch in the little country. There is no doubt that all international Social-Democracy, as well as the really internationalist section of Social-Democracy in the little country, would be against substituting a republic for the monarchy in this case. The substitution of a republic for a monarchy is not an absolute, but one of the democratic demands, subordinate to the interests of democracy (and still more, of course, to those of the socialist proletariat) as a whole.”

(Lenin - The Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up)

However much we may sympathise with the plight of the Syrian people,
we cannot risk the possibility of a conflict between Russia and its
allies, with the US and NATO, because that would threaten not just
the interests of the global working-class that must come first, but
the future of humanity itself.

By all means we should protest outside the Russian Embassy, and the
Syrian Embassy against the atrocities they are committing in Syria.
But, we should also protest outside the US Embassy, outside the UK
Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office, as well as outside the Saudi
and other Gulf State Embassies against their own acts of barbarism
and support for the terrorists operating across the Middle East.

The solution to the problems in the region lies with the
working-class of that region, and the support that can be given to
it, by the global working-class. That is the movement we should be
building, not simply protest movements against western imperialism.
Such a movement has to openly criticise an oppose the reactionaries
like Putin and Assad on the other side, who form part of the problem
not the solution.

Trotsky, who argued the need to oppose the liberal intervention, was criticised as a "doctrinaire", by those liberal politicians, but a hundred years on, the words of Trotsky in relation to the
“liberation” of the Balkans, still resonate in what we see today
of the supposed “liberation” of Syria.

“To speak of the 'liberation' of Macedonia, laid waste, ravaged,
infected with disease from end to end, means either to mock reality
or to mock oneself. Before our eyes a splendid peninsula, richly
endowed by nature, which in the last few decades has made great
cultural progress, is being hurled back with blood and iron into the
dark age of famine and cruel barbarism. All the accumulations of
culture are perishing, the work of fathers, grandfathers and great
grandfathers is being reduced to dust, cities are being laid waste,
villages are going up in flames, and no end can yet be seen to this
frenzy of destruction...Face to face with such reversions to
barbarism it is hard to believe that 'man' is a proud sounding word.
But at least the 'doctrinaires' have one consolation, and it is not
small: they can with a clear conscience say, 'Neither by deed
nor word nor thought are we guilty of this blood'” (loc.cit. p 332)

About Me

Left school at 16. Became an ASTMS shop steward at 19, and a lifelong trade union activist. Delegate to North Staffs Trades Council 1974-87. Secretary North Staffs Miners Support Committee 1984-5. President North Staffs Trades Council 1985-6 and 1986-7. Delegate to Staffordshire Association of Trades Councils 1985-7. Delegate West Midlands Regional Council of the TUC 1985-7. Secretary Newcastle UNISON 2000-2.
Member of the International Communist League/Workers Socialist League 1974-87.
Went to University as mature student at age of 24. Obtained Joint Honours Degree in Economics and Politics with Philosophy and Statistics, followed by a Post Graduate Certificate in Education.
Labour Party member since 1974. Stoke City Councillor 1983-4, expelled from Labour group 1983, and resigned from Council in 1984 because of refusing to vote for rent and rate rises, and budget cuts. Staffordshire County Councillor 1997-2005.
Assistant Secretary Stoke District Labour Party 1981, and held pretty much every position from Executive member, to Branch Secretary, and Branch Chair.